Three color reduction lino print

I'm taking a zoom class in reduction lino printing from Nick Collins via Palo Alto's Pacific Art League.   I'm learning a lot but also watching a lot of YouTube videos; I have so much to learn!

The image is from a photo I found on the internet. I decided I would do 3 colors; a light yellow-orange, a dark orange and a black. I resized and traced the image onto a piece of linoleum with this in mind. 

For the first color, I eliminated everything on the block that I wanted to be white, then printed it. I liked the "chatter marks" in the direction of flight so decided after a test print to leave them. This is made with Caligo Safe Wash ink (an oil based ink that cleans up with soap and water) on Strathmore 300 printing paper. I mixed the extender with yellow and red paint and I love the painterly effect it has. I also like the wash of color and will try to do that purposefully in the future. 

If I do a border again, I won't leave a 1/4" white space outside the border; it adds nothing. It's also possible that such a large white space is not a great idea... And, I'd wanted the butterfly going the other direction but got so excited about carving that I forgot to flip the image.

The first coat took overnight to dry; meanwhile, I carved out all the spaces I wanted to stay yellow. Then I printed with a darker orange.

I started with red and added yellow; then couldn't get the red light enough. One of the videos I watched recommended adding the dark color to the light for manageable results. I could have started over with the ink but just went with it. I carved out some of the chatter marks so I'd have yellow in the sky as well. I am using too much ink.

Here's the final! Only one of the 16 had good registration. Clearly some practice is needed... My big issue was with registration, plus the inability to look at a mirror image and figure out which way to move to adjust the registration. There are a couple of ways of getting truer registration and I'm going to try them on the next print! And probably just try 2 colors. 

The plate only has the black lines left... so I can't print another series of this. But I might trim the plate down and print some watercolor post cards; I can color in the yellow and orange bits and I think they would be fun.

Mid-November already?

I've neglected mentioning the cookbook challenges... October was Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking; I made halibut in a yogurt sauce and sauted spinach and peppers. November's cookbook is George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary.

It's also been a fall of apples. LOTS of apple crisp, apple butter, apple sauce, apple salads. The red with the larger fruit tastes best; the smaller red are good the longer they are on the tree.  They're tiny enough where I use a corer to core them then they are 4 bites. The green are very tasty too although a little sunburnt; I just finished stripping the tree. I'll miss them!

• I haven't spent much time in the studio lately, but today I spent most of the day there. I have a really long warp on the loom for Janet Dawson's class; I abandoned the samples and have decided to weave off the rest in petit point and sew something with it. It's complicated to weave so I'm taking it in small doses.
• Plied the singles I'd spun woolen from a blue/green/black art batt and plied more paper yarn. I also plied up little bits of stuff I was playing with in classes.
• Finished the runner I started in the ruler work class.

I took a class in andamento which is how to place the tiles in a mosaic to create a flow; the teacher teaches the classical method but also talked about some of the contemporary treatments. I have a couple enlarged drawings that I might mosaic.

I am also taking a class in print making. Or course there came the part of the class that I dread, in which the instructor says "Okay, draw something". I just took an easy photo off my phone (of the ground cherry) and used that; we'll see how it prints. For next week, we'll need an image for a multicolor print; I'm likely to steal one of the fetching drawings out of my child's Beginner Piano book and do that; they're super cute and I think would adapt to a learning situation.